Archive for December, 2010

I know that this isn’t what I initially said I was going to talk about, but this is just far more topical. Besides, I’m sure my millions of adoring fans won’t abandon me over this, right?

…Guys?

So, hosting a party. Let me start off by saying that I think that if you’re the one hosting the party, you should have a certain degree of power in deciding how shit gets done. It doesn’t matter if you’re the one who first said "Hey, let’s have a party!". All that matters is that the party is taking place at your house. You can disagree if you’d like, but if you do you’re stupid and I hate you.

There are limits to the host’s power, of course. A host cannot unilaterally decide on a theme, for example. He or she should consult the rest of the partygoers before choosing a theme that is suitable for a majority of people. At the same time, the guests should not decide on a theme without first consulting the host. A good host should not reject a theme that has already been agreed upon by a majority of guests. However, a host has every right to reject a theme that is submitted by a small minority of the guests, and to call those guests stupid.

As a purely hypothetical example, if I were hosting a small party tonight at 6:45 Eastern (5:45 Central), and a small minority of the guests were to go on Facebook and say "OK EVRY1, DRESS IN BLACK N WHITEE BCUZ IT WILL B RLY KEWL LOLOLOL AHAA!!", I would have every right to say "Shut up, you stupid bitch. Learn to speak English before telling my guests what to do."

Another point of contention is RSVPing. This one is very simple: If you’re a guest, tell the host whether you’ll be attending or not, and do so well in advance. Sometimes guests fail to realize that there is more to hosting a party than simply opening and closing the front door. Caterers need to be called, reservations need to be made, etc. These things cannot be done if the host does not have an accurate number of attendees.

To continue my purely hypothetical example, it would give me endless rage and hatred if, on the eve of my party, multiple people were unsure as to whether or not they would be attending. If I had made reservations at Turtle Jack’s (The finest Muskoka Grill house in Ontario, since 1992. Now with 15 locations, including 3883 Rutherford Road in Woodbridge), it would be terribly unfortunate if more people showed up than had said they would, because this could result in the reservation becoming void.

Furthermore, a good guest should speak to the host directly about their RSVP status. If you will be attending the party, tell the host directly. If you will not be attending the party, tell the host directly. If you have previously said that you would be attending the party but have since found out that you cannot attend, tell the host directly. If you have previously said that you would not be attending the party, but have since found out that you can attend, tell the host directly. If a meteorite strikes you in the head and knocks you unconscious ten minutes before the party that you said you would be attending, tell the host directly.

DO NOT:

-Change your RSVP status on Facebook and think you’ve done your duty. -Tell everyone other than the host about your RSVP status. -Change your mind three times in a week. -Attempt to contact the host via:

Mail

Carrier pidgeon

Smoke signals

Morse code

Telepathy

Message in a bottle

Instead, use faster and more conventional methods such as:

The Telephone

E-mail

Text message

Writing on their Facebook wall, assuming they’re the type of person who checks that sort of thing.

It is incredibly irksome if a host has to find out from someone else whether or not you will be attending his or her party. If the host is a bitch, you can probably get away with this. If, however, your host is a vengeful and vindictive human being, he or she will go out of his or her way to make sure that you have a shitty time at the party.

Oh, and one more thing. I almost forgot to mention it because it’s common sense, but some people have trouble with common sense so I’ll say it anyhow:

Do not invite your friends to a party which is not your own unless the host specifically allows you to. If the host has not said "Don’t bring any friends.", this does not mean "Bring all your friends!". The absolute worst thing you could do would be to not tell the host anything, and then show up at the host’s front door at 6:45 Eastern (3:45 Pacific) with a couple of random people in tow. This would most assuredly fill the host with a thousand hates, and possibly cause him or her to scissor-kick you in the face.

But I’m sure that you guys aren’t stupid enough to pull any of that shit, right?

I know it’s been a while since I’ve come here to speak to you. Please forgive me. It’s not that I’ve forgotten you or lost interest, it’s just that I’ve been really busy.

When last we spoke, I expressed a strong desire to return to the world of the living. Being dead has certain advantages, but I would trade all of it away in an instant for my earthly life.

Immediately after leaving you, I set out to find a solution to this problem.

At first I thought about perhaps using my powers of creation to send messages to people on earth. I could spell out a message with stones, or etch something into the walls. In theory I could just create a piece of paper with a message on it, but I feel like that the recipient of such a message would be likely to interpret it as a cruel joke as opposed to a genuine message from myself.

At any rate, I disposed of this idea because my goal is not to simply communicate with people on earth. It is to become part of their lives again. Simply establishing a means of communication is not enough.

After this, I considered possessing another individual and using them to communicate on my behalf. I rejected this idea as well for a few reasons. Possession is a tricky thing, you see. It’s not as simple as television and movies would have you believe. In order to possess someone, you need to displace their consciousness – for simplicity’s sake, let’s call this consciousness a "soul" – with your own. Effectively, I would need to forcibly evict someone else’s soul from their body. Obviously a soul isn’t going to just abandon its body without a fight, and so there’s some risk involved with that process.

What happens afterward to an evicted soul is a mystery. In theory, that person would become what I am now: a soul without a body. In practice, that may or may not be the case. My soul was not forcibly evicted from my body. My soul escaped naturally after death. It is entirely possible that forcibly removing a soul from its body could kill the soul. Furthermore, I don’t know whether or not I’d be able to leave the possessed person’s body at will. Before death I did not have the ability to leave my body at will, and I have no evidence to suggest that death has given me this ability.

That’s all very technical. Basically, possession carries far too many risks to be a viable option at the moment. But all of my thoughts on possession sparked a third idea, and it is this idea that I believe is my best option for the moment.

Along the same lines as possession, it involves placing myself into a human body. But rather than place myself into a body that is already inhabited by a soul, I would place myself into a soulless body instead. And where would I find a soulless body? Well, I’d have to create one. You might ask why I wouldn’t just use one of the many lifeless bodies located about six feet below the earth. Well, the thing about corpses is that they’re corpses for a reason. Strong, young, healthy people don’t just drop dead. People die because their bodies have failed them in some way. As such, creating my own body is the only way to go.

This idea removes many of the risks of possession. There’s no chance of inadvertently destroying anyone else’s soul, and there’s no chance of losing my own soul to another soul resisting my efforts to possess its body.

The one problem with this idea is that it’s permanent. As I said earlier, I don’t know whether or not I can leave a body at will, but even if I can, it doesn’t matter. With possession, there’s another soul to take over the body once I leave. If it’s a body that I’ve created, however, leaving it would leave behind an empty shell. And while I would know that it’s only an empty shell, it would be viewed as a murder by the rest of the world. The chaos and confusion that would ensue are things that I would like to avoid at all costs.

So, if I go back, I will be unable to return to this state of being for many years, until a natural death frees me from my created body.

I’m not ready to make a decision yet, but I will need to think about this long and hard over the coming weeks. It is wonderful to have found a way to reclaim my earthly existence, and yet it is difficult to commit what may well end up being three-quarters of a century to it. I hope that you’ll be there for me to help me decide.

Well, we’re almost done here. Microsoft is pulling the plug on Spaces on January 4th, so I’ve got less than a month to say everything that I want to say here.

Really, there isn’t too much right now. I’m pretty happy with life at the moment, and when I’m pretty happy with life, I’ve got much less to complain about, and when I’ve got much less to complain about, I’ve got much less to write about.

That said, I’ve got three blogs left that I’d like to post. Two of them are the sort of deeper pseudo-philosophical type of blog that I used to write years ago. I feel that it’s fitting to end off that way. One of them I actually wrote nine months ago but never posted, so I’ll have to look into my archives to dig that one up and see if it’s still representative of my thoughts.

The last one would be an epic try-to-recap-everything-that’s-happened-in-the-last-five-years-and-reflect-on-it blog. It’d probably be the type that’s so long that no one other than myself ever reads it, but I’m okay with that. There are two problems with that though. The first is the time constraint. The Cuba Blog took months to write up. I’ve got less than a month this time, and with the distraction of exams, Christmas, and New Year’s in the way, there might not be enough time to get it done. The second reason is redundancy. Along the way I’ve tended to recap various parts of my life, and so recapping the last five years might involve some repetition, which I’d like to avoid. So the epic blog may or may not actually happen.

I’ll probably also root through my archives to see if there’s any other unposted blogs that I should post. Usually there’s a good reason why I spend an hour working on a blog only to decide against posting it, but if those reasons are no long applicable, maybe you’ll get a bonus blog or two.